Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Mapping American Sanctions

One way that the United States can attempt to influence or punish companies & individuals around the world is by imposing economic sanctions. Sanctions effectively prohibit non-sanctioned businesses and individuals from engaging in economic activity with sanctioned entities. The punishment for breaking a sanction can involve huge fines and / or civil or criminal penalty.

Enigma Labs has released the Sanctions Tracker in order to provide an historical overview of United States economic sanctions and to track new sanctions levied against individuals and companies. The Sanctions Tracker includes an interactive map which visualizes Specially Designated Nationals issued across the globe since 1994.

The color of the dots on the map indicate one of five different sanctions programs. Using the timeline you can see how different sanction programs have shifted spatially over time. For example in the 1990's the USA concentrated narcotics trafficking sanctions mainly in Colombia. If you press play on the timeline you can see how US sanctions have now spread to cover individuals and companies in every single country in Central America.